Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-06-25
INGERSOLL'S JUG OF WHISKY.
How He Sent Present and Got n Tenn.
perance Lecture in Reply.
New York SUM-

1 new 10TH sun.
| My DEAR COLONEL: You remember |
presume, once sending our friend Jug of
chronic whisky bearing this label of praise
to his enemy:
Il send you some of the most wonderful
whisky that ever drove a skeleton from the
| feast or painted landscapes in the brain of
man. 1t is the mingled souls of wheat and
corn. Init you will find the sunshine and
| the shadow that chased each over the bill
owy fields, the breath of June, the carol OF
the lark, the dews of night, the wealth of
| summer and autumn's rich content. all
| golden with imprisoned light. Drink it,
and you will hear the voice of men and
maidens singing the Harvest Home"
mingled with the laughter of children.
Drink it, and you will feel within your
blood the started dawns, the dreamy.
tawny dusks of many perfect days. For
forty years this liquid joy has been within
| the happy slaves of oak, longing to touch
| the lips of man."
OF course, Colonel, you will be glad to
learn how it and he took to each other.
Well, believing you, he drank of that jug
| till 1.-The skeleton it drove from the feast
came and sat in ugly profile on his hearth
stone-drank till the landscapes in blossom
on the walls of his home he pilfered and
pawned To paint your arid landscape in
his brain" 1t was the mingled souls of
wheat and corn" you told him, but ere he
halfhad finished it stole away the last re-
luctant kernel garnered for growing chill
dren, and it conjured the mingled souls"
of evil-doing and pauper-living to drive
out the radiant spirits of manhood and
plenteous life.
Still he hoped, for you told him he'd
find in it sunshine; but he found in it only
raven shadows, each tapping wings blacker
than its elder fellow-shadows that chased
each other with buzzard greed, for both car
cass and the immortal, and chased their
victim out of the great armchair of rich
content up to the rough pine stool in the
! dismal garret, while close beside him they
chased into the NANCY shelter the last of
| one loving woman with the broken soul
her feyer-pinched young John and little
staryeling Mary. In it, too, he found, not
your pansy breath of June, the carol of the
lark and the dews of night that kiss the
| coming corn, but the stark-mad blast of
December, the bark OF the wolf at his door
and the moldering dampness of the night OF
despair
| Then you sang to him of the wealth of
summer and autumn's rich content that
should twine the neck of your Bourbon
chalice, but it twined for him a barren
summer to an angry winter and rags that
knit themselves together in imprisoned"
darkness.
Yet the friend of your fascinating enmity
drank on till, down in the fostering cellar
and the crawling sawdust, he loafed and
listened for your :" Harvest Home" but
heard only your brutal men and maidens
vendible utter maudlin blasphemy of the
Master, and caught the melody of their
shame in brace of uuclean song. Why,
sir, he drank till the heavenly laughter
of little children round his knee died away
into restless moaning-died into the dying
child's whispered wall for bread
Drank? Yes fast and deep he drank your
dreamy potion off, till deep and fast within
his blood he felt never cne startled dawn,
but forever life eciipsed, the sun OF the
future always setting, sinking through the
! tawny dusks of the ciouded mind toward
that midnight which foretells no DAY into
the final gloom of the drunkard-tbe dam
nation that's endless in its desolalion
There, declining foe, you'll find your
friend, and the days of his homage to your
deformed genius BEING spent, he'll gather
courage to say; Colonel Ingers0ll, if
from out thy earthern cask has crept unto
! me one liquid JOY, ii is that here | look
upon its giver eternally kenneled beside
the offspring of his gift thy soul weary
scorched and quenchless messmate at the
feast OF thy betrayed-ihe host that wor-
SHIPPED thee and the feast whence the
skeleton shall never depart
/, Sir Robert, in ungrateful beguilement of
many unstable souls and the crush of sweet
homes only soberness can build, none-no,
not one-hath SO measured 10 TO the
warped, unwashable Crosby as hast thou
in thy stanza of prose accrediting with lite
the death-begetting sweat of the still
JAMES CLEMENT AMBROSE.
Evanston, H. June Sth.